Maintainer's View of Fields

The status and resolution fields define and track the life cycle of a
bug. In addition to their regular
descriptions, we also use two adition status values:

WAITING

The submitter was asked for further information, or asked to try
out a patch. The PR remains in that state until the submitter
responds.

SUSPENDED

Work on the problem has been postponed. This happens if a timely
solution is not possible or is not cost-effective at the present time.
The PR continues to exist, though a solution is not being actively
sought. If the problem cannot be solved at all, it should be closed
rather than suspended.

The following two fields describe how serious a bug is from a user's
perspective (Severity) and what Priority we assign to it in fixing it:

Severity

This field describes the impact of a bug.

Critical

crashes, memory leaks and similar problems on code
that is written in a common enough style to affect a significant fraction of
users

Normal

major loss of functionality

Minor

minor loss of functionality, misspelled word, or other
problem where an easy workaround exists

Enhancement

Request for enhancement

Priority

For regressions this field describes the importance
and order in which a bug should be fixed. Priorities are set by
the release management team only. If you think a priority is wrong,
set it to P3 and add a note.
The available priorities are:

P1

Most important. This generally labels a regression which the
release manager feels should be addressed for the next release
including wrong-code regressions.
A P1 regression blocks the release.

P2

This generally indicates a regression users will notice on a
major platform, which is not severe enough to block a release though.
This includes bugs that were already present in a previous release.

P3

The default priority for new PRs which have not been prioritized
yet. Priorities below P3 are not on the radar of release management.

P4

An important regression on a platform that is not in the list of
primary or secondary targets or a regression that users
will not see for release builds.
This includes bugs with error-recovery or ice-checking keywords.

P5

A less important regression on a platform that is not in the list of
primary or secondary targets.

As a general rule of thumb, within each priority level, bugs that result
in incorrect code (keyword wrong-code) are considered equally as important
to fix as those that lead to rejecting valid code (rejects-valid) and as
those that cause an ICE for valid code (ice-on-valid-code). Lower in
importance, however, are accepts-invalid and ice-on-invalid bugs,
and less important still are missed-optimization opportunities.

Regressions that only affect more recent releases are prioritized over those
that also affect older releases. For example, prior to the release of GCC 7,
a regression that was introduced in GCC 6 and that affects GCC 7 is considered
more important to fix in GCC 7 than a regression that was introduced in GCC 5
(and is still present in GCC 6 and 7).

Keywords

Procedures and Policies

Putting reports in components "C", "C++", and "optimization" in
state "NEW" requires that there is a reduced, small testcase.
This makes sure that all NEW reports are really analyzed and are ready to
be handed off to the people actually fixing bugs.

Regressions should be explicitly
marked as such. The summary line should read

[branches-to-fix regression] rest-of-summary

where branches-to-fix is the list of maintained branches
(separated by slashes) that need fixing.
The target milestone should be set
to the next release of the newest active release branch that needs
fixing (the rationale is that a patch will have to go to the newest
release branch before any other release branch).
The priority of a regression should initially be set to P3.
The milestone and the priority can
be changed by the release manager and his/her delegates.

If a patch fixing a PR has been submitted, a link
to the message with the patch should be added to the PR, as well as the
keyword "patch".

Meta-bugs (reports with the keyword "meta-bug") are
used to group PRs that have a common denominator. Meta-bugs do not have
testcases of their own, but provide links to regular PRs via Bugzilla's
"depends on/blocks" mechanism instead: they depend on the regular PRs.
Information concerning the majority of bugs blocking a meta-bug should
be added to the meta-bug instead of each single PR.

Bugs with keyword "ice-on-invalid-code", where GCC
emits a sensible error message before issuing an ICE (the ICE will be
replaced by the message "confused by earlier errors, bailing out" in
release versions) should get "minor" severity and the additional keyword
"error-recovery".

Bugs in component "bootstrap" that refer to older
releases or snapshots/CVS versions should be put into state "WAITING",
asking the reporter whether she can still reproduce the problem and to
report her findings in any case (whether positive or negative).

If the response is "works now", close the report,

if the response is "still broken", change the state to "NEW", and

if no response arrives, close the PR after three months.

Bugs that are in state "WAITING" because they lack
information that is necessary for reproducing the problem can be closed
if no response was received for three months.

When closing a PR because it got fixed, please
set the target milestone to the first release where
it will be/has been fixed. Also adjust the target milestone when a
fix is backported. Finally, please adjust the
Known To Fail and Known To Work fields to record
what was fixed.

Duplicate PRs should be marked as such. If you
encounter a PR that is marked as "resolved fixed", but should be marked
as a duplicate, please change the resolution. (You have to reopen the
PR before you can resolve it as a duplicate.)

For questions related to the use of GCC,
please consult these web pages and the
GCC manuals. If that fails,
the gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list might help.
Comments on these web pages and the development of GCC are welcome on our
developer list at gcc@gcc.gnu.org.
All of our lists
have public archives.

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Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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